


Born on the Fourth of July

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-21 00:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11346240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: A holiday present from Catherine, set in the days when M/K were partners.





	Born on the Fourth of July

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Born on the Fourth of July by Catherine

**********  
"Born on the Fourth of July"  
by Catherine  
**********

"Congress shall make no law respecting...the right of the people to peaceably assemble...."

* * *

Overrun with tourists and drunk people, packed with a mass of humanity guaranteed to produce claustrophobia in the most seasoned of veterans, loud enough so that you had to shout greetings to your friends when you had finally found them, hot enough to require heatstroke stations every five hundred yards. Fox Mulder loved the Mall on the Fourth of July. 

He made his way carefully through the roiling crowds, trying to avoid stepping on the children and animals chasing each other in the shade of the adult population. He could remember what it had been like to be down there, the one time his parents had brought him to D.C. for the summer, the year he was eight and his sister four. Another country, underneath; his parents had simply trusted them not to get lost and they had found other children, gone on aimless treasure hunts below the adults' waistlines. It was cool down there, he remembered. Nobody seemed to notice them; they had simply run and run in circles, an expected part of the landscape. The memory was a good one, for once, and it made him grin as he glanced behind him to make sure his partner was keeping up with his acrobatic advance through the crowd. 

"Come on, Krycek!" he yelled gleefully. "I'll race you!" And he took off without another word. 

He could hear his partner cursing for a while, then presumably he shut up in order to conserve his breath. Mulder twisted quickly in the slender paths opened up to him, ducking nimbly around other peoples' sacred picnic blankets and one group of rowdy frat brothers from Catholic parked out on a battered couch. He didn't bother to see if Alex was keeping up with him. When he finally wound down, stopping, panting and laughing, with his hands on his knees, just outside the National Gallery, he had nearly forgotten about his silent pursuer. So it was a bit of a surprise when a sweaty and determined body crashed into him and knocked him to the grass. His first thought was to reach for his gun. His second was to close his eyes and release the last of the laughter in a fit of giggles. 

"Get off me, Krycek," he said finally, "Or people will start to talk."

His partner rolled off, sitting on the grass in Mulder's shade and cheerfully brushing dirt off his knees. "Admit it, you deserved that. I would never have found you again -- and your friends are the ones with the beer."

"Why do you think I did it?" Mulder asked, grinning again. "Come on." He offered Krycek a hand up and the two agents set off through the crowds again.

Scully's family was an oasis -- four blankets spread together on the hill below the Lincoln Memorial and above the Reflecting Pool. Mulder knew that Bill and Melissa had been planning to come down early to get a good spot -- but this! They must have been here at two or three in the morning. The crowd around them seethed merrily, but the blankets were an exercise in *controlled* chaos. 

Mulder wasn't sure why he had invited Krycek along. It had been a last-minute decision -- the two of them had been called from their respective beds early that morning to help out in a drug bust, of all things. Mulder suspected they were being punished for the report on their most recent X-File, which had had to do with a painting murdering young women. But he had no proof.

The bust wrapped up, Mulder had been preparing to get himself the hell down to the Mall to meet Scully and her family, whose picnic he had been invited to, when he had looked up. Krycek had that lost look he got sometimes, like he didn't know which foot to put in front of the other. Mulder had the feeling he had no plans for the immediate future. Some wild impulse had made him ask if his partner would care to come along. A quick call to Scully's cell phone had confirmed the invitation, and Mulder's smug former partner had also told the agent just *where* the party was camped out.

Now, seeing Scully's mother hugging the awkward junior agent, watching him unbend somewhat under the burning sun, Mulder was glad he had had the thought. He liked Krycek. The kid was nice, smart, funny -- even cute, in a weird sort of way. 

The picnic lasted for hours. Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad, carrot sticks, brownies, lemonade, peach pie.... The parade of food seemed to go on forever. The fair-skinned Scullys were all reddening to one degree or another, depending on how much sunscreen they had used. Mulder and his dark partner smiled at each other -- both of them got tan instead of burning. 

Lying next to Krycek, on his back on the edge of the blanket, staring up at the dark sky, Mulder waited for the fireworks to start. He came down here every year -- he had started when one of his few friends from Quantico asked him to come, had somehow found someone to spend the holiday with every year for the past ten years. The fireworks were spectacular. He knew they were visible as far away as Anacostia and probably beyond, but here, up close, they were bright and deafening and gorgeous beyond belief. They lit the sky in a burst of red, white, and blue, going on for what seemed like hours as flower after flower of sparks tumbled downwards in separate parabolas of fire.

Meanwhile, in the growing darkness, there were people nearby. The noise had calmed somewhat as each party settled onto their own blankets, but conversation drifted languidly across the grass. Red wine and beer were flowing like water across the Mall and cigarette smoke was drifting upwards from the next blanket over. Someone laughed in the distance and a firefly lit up three feet above Mulder's upturned face. He suddenly and unaccountably felt a completely uncontainable burst of joy. He propped himself up on one elbow to share it with Alex.

"Krycek, you know, I really love this country," he said simply. His partner raised one eyebrow questioningly. "You know, I spend a lot of my time angry at the government and the lies it creates. But this --" he swept his free hand out in a gesture which encompassed their surroundings. "Look at this, Alex. *Look* at it. The product may not be perfect, but the intent is pure. I'm sure of it. I love it that there are all these people down here, braving noise and crowding and sun to celebrate life. I love the energy down here, the way everyone is putting aside their hatred and their fear, even if it's just for one day. I love the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln and Barney Frank and Eleanor Norton and John Lewis and baseball, and, oh, and public radio and free museums and libraries and schools, and grass and apple pie and...." A laugh pushed itself up out through the painful knot of happiness inside him, breaking loose from his throat, and he joined his grinning partner in laughing at his own silly and slightly wild enthusiasm before sobering again.

"There are evil men out there with their hands far too deep in far too many pies, but we can't let them ruin it for the rest of us. It's too good. All this is too good to let go. It's just...too good." He ran out of even the inadequate, incoherent words he had been trying to describe the feelings he was having, and simply stared at his partner, a smile splitting his face like a fool. Krycek had a strange look on his face, a skewed smile as he tilted his head to one side.

"You know what I love about you, Mulder?" he asked softly, not waiting for a response before continuing. "I love it that you can go right to the heart of things, and make me see the answer too." And he pushed Mulder's shoulderblade back onto the blanket, and slid over, and kissed him. 

Mulder didn't question it, just opened his mouth and pulled his partner's tongue in. His eyes were open and so were Alex's; they looked deeply across the slender space between them, sharing something, in its way, profoundly holy. They didn't notice as the Scullys and the people on the neighboring blankets saw them, did a double-take, and stared; they barely heard when Dana Scully started to applaud, only to be joined by the entire hillside above the reflecting pool. When they finally surfaced and sat up, seeing the crowd around them, Mulder laughed. He let out a cry of pure euphoric energy and, taking Krycek by the shoulders, kissed him again. They didn't abandon this one for a long, long time -- or only very briefly. Krycek broke the contact for just a moment, to murmer softly against Mulder's lips, "Happy Independence Day". 

************

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

*******

We the People of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, secure the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


End file.
